"To protect and serve"

While the President was meeting with his staff recently, an aide spoke up.
“Sir,” he asked, “why do we take money from people as taxes and then return some of it as ‘benefits’”
“What do you mean?” replied the President.
“Well, consider a person making less than $10,000 to $20,000 a year. It makes no sense to tax him and then give him assistance. It seems to me that if we didn’t take so much money from citizens to pay for food stamps, unemployment, welfare and Social Security, a lot less people would need food stamps, unemployment, welfare and Social Security. Why the “middle-man” handling?”
“Well, son, I guess you don’t know how government really works. Let me give you an example. When I was a boy, a friend gave me a colt. That colt was so wild that you couldn’t get within 300 feet of him. A neighbor told me how to tame him.
“‘You withhold all food and water from him until he gets desperate and has to come to you. Soon he will learn to depend on you for his care and then you have him.’
“People are animals. They react the same way. Every government in history has learned that, to control people, you have to make them need and want it. Therefore we must first make sure that they cannot take care of themselves. Through heavy taxation we impoverish large numbers of citizens. This forces them to look to us for ‘security.’ They’ll jump through hoops or lick our boots to get what they need. We then use their own money to provide for them. That way we can control them and their votes. Heh! Heh! Heh! What a racket! And, it works every time!
“That, my boy, is how government operates!”